


Wildflowers

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 01:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4327836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joyce looked at Spike as if he was a little boy claiming he had permission for a biscuit, when she knew he didn’t. “I’m not letting you in, Spike,” she said with a sideways little smile. Spike sighed and leaned against the tree he’d been lurking under. Joyce’s wariness faded at Spike’s obvious defeat. "Would you like a cup of tea? I’ll meet you on the back porch." Spike's final conversation with Joyce. Set after Crush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wildflowers

  
    Wildflowers. Spike supposed he could have bought something, but it didn’t seem right for Joyce. None of the money he ‘earned’ was obtained exactly morally, and Joyce deserved better than that. Instead he went through the cemetery and checked the corners of the rail yard, collecting goldenrod and daisies and ferns, and pretty purple heal-alls. He’d been shocked at the news that Joyce Summers was dead. She’d been so sick, but then she had seemed all better. He hadn’t been bothered so much by a death in... well, ever, as far as he could remember.

    That was awkward in and of itself.

    He wondered what Joyce would have said about it, what she would have asked about what it meant. Buffy’s mum often asked him what he was thinking, tried to understand his mind, in a way that no one else ever had. It wasn’t as if he could explain to any other vampire that a death – a simple, bloodless, perfectly natural death of a perfectly ordinary human being – had just slammed against him and left him deeply bruised. Death _was_ life to a vampire. It wasn’t supposed to bother them.

    But Spike was bothered. He felt deep sympathy for Buffy, and little basically orphaned Dawn, but them aside, he himself was going to miss Joyce. She’d never make him laugh again, or pour him a cup of tea, or... do anything. For a dead man, death had never seemed so close to him before.

    And to his annoyance, for the last few weeks, he hadn’t been able to see her. Not since he’d made his disastrous move on Buffy. And Joyce, unlike Buffy, and unlike any of her friends, had already forgiven him for that debacle. He was glad he’d spoken to her that last time. It eased his heart a bit to know that she, at least, wasn’t holding a grudge.   
  


***  
  
    “Hey,” Spike said casually as Joyce had stepped out of her car. It was the night after Drusilla had left. The night after he’d chained Buffy up and threatened to let Dru kill her. The night after all his heated and completely intangible dreams had gone up in smoke, leaving him hollow and empty, without even the shadow of a hope.

    Joyce looked startled, and a little wary. Wary enough that Spike already knew what the answer to his next question would be, but he had to ask, anyway. “Could I come in a minute? I have to talk to Buffy about something.”

    Joyce looked at him as if he was a little boy claiming he had permission for a biscuit, when she knew he didn’t. “I’m not letting you in, Spike,” she said with a sideways little smile.

    Spike sighed and leaned against the tree he’d been lurking under.

    Joyce’s wariness faded at Spike’s obvious defeat. “Buffy’s not exactly happy with you,” she said.

    “I know that,” Spike muttered. “Had to try.” Joyce had been his last hope. Finding himself barred from Buffy’s house had been, to his surprise, a staggering blow. He hadn’t thought she’d ever do it. She hadn’t banned him even before the chip had been put in his head. He’d come back to Sunnydale, still the big bad murderer he’d always been, and found the place still open and welcoming to him. He’d tried to kill Buffy and Willow, and still the place had been open to him. Ever since that one night, a single truce to defeat Angel, and Buffy had never rescinded the invitation she had so casually bestowed upon him more than two years before. He’d gotten used to it. The one house where he was always welcome. And now his last link with Buffy was snapped, probably for good.

    His bleeding heart was ripped open just a little wider.

    “I think you’ve frightened her,” Joyce said.

    “Really?” Spike was flattered for a moment, and then, “Oh,” as he realized it probably wasn’t a good thing. “Bugger,” he added.

    Joyce left her car and came closer to him. “You realize your behavior last night was absolutely unconscionable,” she said.

    Spike felt lost for a moment. “No,” he said glumly. “Don’t really have a conscience.”

    Joyce laughed and looked at her watch. “Buffy’s with Dawn. She said she’d be gone until seven.” She looked at Spike. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked sympathetically.

    He looked up in surprise. “You’ll let me in?”

    “No. But I’ll meet you on the back porch.”

    Spike was touched. “Thanks,” he said softly.

    Ten minutes later he was sitting on the back porch steps with Joyce Summers, a cup of warm tea in his hands. “You’ve got twenty minutes,” Joyce said. “Then I really will ask you to leave. If Buffy doesn’t want you around, I’m not going to try and persuade her otherwise.”

    “I know,” Spike said. “Thanks for the cuppa.”

    “You’re welcome.” They sat in silence for a few moments.

    Spike realized this was probably the last time he’d get to do this. Joyce was one of the few people – well, really the only person in the world, now – who treated him as if he were a person, and not a monster. She knew how he liked his tea. She kept actual loose leaf Assam around – as far as he could see, specifically for him – and she knew to put in the milk in first so it wouldn’t get scalded. He supposed she might have learned to make a decent cup of tea in deference to Giles, but if she had she’d taken her sweet time about it. The first time she’d sat with Spike over a hot cup, she’d only had basic black tea bags. She herself had admitted they weren’t very good, and made him hot cocoa instead. He’d been feeling much the same then as he felt now, pining over Drusilla, slowly sobering up.  Alone. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

    “No, you’re not,” Joyce said. “But I understand that you’d like to be.”

    Spike sighed and looked up at the sky.

    “You lose a lot of humanity when you’re turned into a vampire, don’t you,” Joyce said, more a statement than a question.

    “Not enough,” Spike said glumly. “If I’d lost all of it, I wouldn’t feel like this.” Then he sighed. “Yeah,” he said then. “Most vampires lose all of it. Some keep bits and pieces. We come through the change with different gifts.”

    “What were yours?” Joyce asked.

    Spike shrugged. “Passion,” he said. “Mostly translates into battle.”

    “Well, I’ve seen you fight,” Joyce said. “You are very skilled at it. Even Buffy has said so.”

    Spike chuckled. “You don’t have to make things up to make me feel better, Joyce,” he said. “It’s not gonna work, and I probably don’t even deserve it.”

    “I don’t lie, Spike,” Joyce said. “And being self-deprecating isn’t going to make me invite you in, either.”

    “Yeah, I know that ship’s sailed,” Spike said. “The door has closed, the path is barred.” He took a sip of his comforting cup of English style tea. It made him feel warm, for a brief second.

    “Buffy really was surprised,” Joyce said. “She had no idea how you felt.”

    “Neither did I,” he said quietly.

    “Really?”

    “Not for a long time,” Spike told her.

    “I will say, it surprised me, too. Though not so much as Buffy. She sees you a little more antagonistically than I do.” Then Joyce shrugged. “Of course, you’ve never chained me up or tried to kill me.”

    “You’re decent,” Spike said. “Kind. I like that.”

    “Has that ever saved any of your victims before?” Joyce asked.

    Spike thought back. “A few,” he said. “Probably not enough to make a difference.” He sighed. “It was supposed to be so simple,” he muttered. “All I wanted to do was kill her. I mean, what’s wrong with that? Find a slayer, fight the good fight, and one of you takes home the prize at the end of the night. It makes _sense_. Slayer, vampire, life against death, good against evil. Then someone sticks this thing in my head, and suddenly I’m all hollow inside, and all the blood’s dried up, and the good fight turns into this ache, and I’m _drowning_.” He rubbed his eye. “Sorry,” he said. “I know it all probably sounds insane to you.”

    “I do understand unrequited love,” Joyce said. “I think most people do.”

    Spike chuckled. “Well. You’re about four steps up on Buffy. She thinks it isn’t real.”

    “Do you think it is?”

    Spike nearly choked with longing at the question. He tried to find a way to say that it felt a thousand times more real than anything else in his life, without bursting into tears. He couldn’t. “Yes,” he said quietly.

    “Then you went about it the wrong way,” Joyce said. “Though, I don’t know if there would have been a right way. I suspect there are far too many complications between you.”

    “I know it,” Spike said. “I know it’s wrong, god, I know how wrong it is. It’s eating up everything that was me. And I can’t even go back to when it was simple. Bloody hell. I should have just let Dru kill her.”

    Joyce seemed more curious than disturbed. “Why didn’t you?”

    Spike glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

    “Well, you don’t have a conscience,” she said. “You don’t have a soul. You’d already chained her up and threatened to kill her. What made you change your mind?”

    Joyce was taking this all very matter-of-factly. Spike gazed at her, helpless in confusion. “I wish I knew?” he said, so bewildered it came out a question. “I just saw she was in actual danger, and suddenly I was unchaining her, and standing between them, and I... I don’t know. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, either – went to watch her die, and end up saving her instead. God, I hate this.”

    “If you really didn’t want to kill her,” Joyce persisted, “why did you attack her in the first place?”

    Spike shrugged. “It made sense at the time. I was a little....” He waved his hand back and forth, to indicate wonky.

    “How come?”

    “It’s... disturbing, Joyce. You’re human, you don’t want to hear it.”

    “I asked,” Joyce said. “Buffy said you claimed you were changing, that you felt you were becoming good. What I know of you is slightly sinister, but basically companionable. Very little of what _I’ve_ seen of you has been evil. I want to know what made you suddenly change back.” She gazed at him. “The dichotomy is interesting to me. You seem like such a nice young man, yet I know you were a brutal killer, and you’ve tried to murder my daughter. Giles tells me that within a vampire there is a meld of demon and man, and I’m trying to understand. What made the difference last night?”

    “I hadn’t had human blood in a year,” he told her. “Dru killed a victim for me, and it all... I don’t know. Went to my head, I think.”

    “Oh,” Joyce said. “So, it’s like an addiction. The evil. And your Drusilla made you fall off the wagon, as it were.”

    “Sort of,” he said, trying to figure out how it was different. “I mean, I _am_ evil. Sometimes... Buffy can make me not want to be, which is... frankly disgusting, and don’t tell anybody. But I mean, I really _haven’t_ been jonesing for human blood like I used to. And _that’s_ true. The need for it... yeah. Yeah, the addiction. That faded after a few weeks. I still want it, but not... not like I did. But I’m still evil. If I’m being honest, yeah, I’m evil. We all are, we wake up knowing we are.” He wasn’t being very coherent, he knew. He’d never tried to work it out before, and never for a human. “But human blood... it does do things to you. Your thoughts get darker the more you take. Or... no.... I guess it _is_ like a high. I wouldn’t have thought so before I got off it – I mean, over a century, I’ve never been mostly on animal blood until this chip. The evil and the killing all seemed perfectly normal, ‘cause you’re meant to, you know? It’s the way we’re made. But... I don’t know. I felt different last night. More like how I used to feel, before. As if there could be no consequences to anything I did. Tying Buffy up just seemed normal. It... it didn’t even _occur_ to me that she might resent it. I don’t know if it was the blood or the evil itself, or just Dru.” He shook his head. “God, it would have been so much easier if I could have just stayed with Dru.”

    “Would it really?”

    “By far.”

    “But could you have trusted her? I mean you are vulnerable now. No offence, I mean–”

    “It’s all right, Joyce. You’re a clever woman. I know you wouldn’t be sitting here with me now if I wasn’t.”

    “What I mean is, I know she’s broken your heart in the past.”

    “Twice,” Spike said.

    “What do you mean?”

    “Well, she stopped it, once,” Spike told her. “She made me.”

    “Oh,” Joyce said. “So there’s a family bond, more than just a romantic one. And that’s why you listened to this Dru, let her corrupt you?”

    “Yeah, but I didn’t, did I,” Spike said. “I tried, I just...” His eyes closed and he sagged. “There was Buffy.” He rubbed his head. “Buffy, Buffy, Buffy, everywhere I bloody turn around. God, this is hell.”

    “I’m trying to understand,” Joyce said. “Do you want to be completely evil? Attack humans again, for instance?”

    Spike shook his head. “I did last night. I don’t tonight. I probably will again tomorrow. It’s all barking mad.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know who I am, or what I want. This chip is _doing_ things to me, more than just the pain.”

    “Is it the chip, or is it getting off the addiction?” Joyce asked.

    “Maybe both,” Spike said. “Sometimes I think it’s Buffy,” he added quietly. “What kind of a sick demon had to go fall for the slayer?” He shook his head, hopeless and bewildered.

    “Why do you think that happened?”

    “I don’t know,” Spike said. “Because I’m a masochist?”

    Joyce laughed, then grew thoughtful. “Buffy tells me you’ve killed slayers in the past. Is that true?”

    “Two of ‘em,” he said quietly.

    “Did they surprise you, or...?”

    “I sought them out,” Spike said. “Just like I sought out Buffy.”

    “Why?”

    Spike shrugged. “Sick of fights I knew I could win.”

    “So you were searching out an equal,” Joyce said. “The good to answer your evil.”

    Spike frowned. “Maybe....” he said. “Why are you asking this?”

    “It’s my daughter’s job to slay your kind,” Joyce said. “I’d like to understand what she’s doing.”

    “She’s never asked me any of this.”

    “I’ve learned that a lot of Buffy’s skills come by instinct,” Joyce said, “and in most cases, she can’t explain it in any way that I can understand. Besides. You have a unique perspective.”

    “You know, you do, too,” Spike pointed out. “I’ve never run into a human being who treats me like... a human being,” he said. “Not the way you do.”

    “Buffy does, too,” Joyce said. “But slaying is her calling, and that makes things awkward between you.”

    “No kidding,” Spike said with a roll of his eyes.

    “If she thought of you as nothing but a vampire, she wouldn’t be so horrified by what you did last night,” Joyce pointed out. “She’d expect it. But because she’s come to trust you, last night was a betrayal.”

    “She trusts me?” Spike asked, shocked.

    “Well, she did,” Joyce said. “In a trusted adversary sort of way. Probably not so much anymore.”

    Spike sank under the weight of the lost opportunity. He covered his eyes, hoping he wasn’t about to start crying. He seriously wished that when Dru had changed him from a human to a vampire that the impulse to cry had been suppressed along with his conscience.

    “That really bothers you,” Joyce said.

    “I really love her,” Spike said, still pushing at his head as if trying to squeeze the feeling out of it.

    “That sounds painful,” Joyce said quietly.

    “You have no idea,” Spike said, trying to keep the whimper out of his voice. “I’d do anything to stop. It hurts every second, if it was something like my arm or my leg I’d rip it off right here, if I could, and just live without it.” Spike shook his head and tried to gain some composure, ashamed of his display. “I’m sorry, Joyce. I shouldn’t be putting any of this on you.”

    “Am I right in thinking you don’t really have anyone else to talk to about it?” Joyce asked.

    Spike sighed. “The demon underground wouldn’t understand me and the slayer any more than Buffy’s mates do.” He shook his head. “They find it just as disturbing the other direction.”

    “And with you unable to hurt anyone but other demons, you’re sort of... trapped between both worlds,” Joyce said. “As is Buffy. Not entirely human, but not really other. I think I understand.”

    Joyce had just made more sense out of the whole debacle than Spike had been able to make since before he’d realized he was in love with Buffy.

    “But chaining people up and threatening to kill them is not the right thing to do, Spike. You already know this.”

    “Do you think it’s unforgivable?” he asked. Joyce looked at him, the same bad little boy look she’d given him earlier. Spike sighed. “Of course you do.”

     Then Joyce frowned a bit. “Well, I don’t know,” she said, thoughtful. “If you were human, I’d say yes. For what you are... you seemed to be behaving within the moral precepts of your nature and culture... and your strongest impulse was ultimately to protect Buffy. As it always seems to be.”

    Spike looked over at her.

    “It’s my job to examine the mores and cultures of other peoples,” Joyce said, in response to the question in his eyes. “To understand their artwork, in the gallery. So, as a vampire, I’m sure you saw it as a very romantic gesture. But Buffy is _not_ a vampire, dear.”

    “Do you think she could ever see it that way?”

    “Probably not,” Joyce said. “It’s a more personal issue to her than it is to me. I can understand the variants of culture. In Bali there’s a tribe where the yearly courtship festival involves the young women of the village watching the young men combat each other with briars of sharp thorns. There is a great deal of blood splattered about, and it is considered very romantic. For them.” Spike actually agreed. It sounded like a box of chocolates. “But I don’t think Buffy would ever enjoy being courted by the men from that culture, either.”

    Spike sighed. “Well,” he asked, pretty much resigned already, but curious. “Would _you_ forgive me for it?”

    “It would take a lot, if I were in Buffy’s place, to forgive something like that,” Joyce said.

    “What about in your place?” he asked.

    Joyce smiled. “Finish your tea,” she said, a more eloquent answer than any other she could have given.

    Spike took a deep swallow, enjoying the heat on his face. He looked up at her. “You’re a real nice lady, Mrs. Summers,” he said.

    “You’ve used your own home to shelter me and my youngest,” Joyce said. “You’ve fought to destroy monsters that intended to kill me, and members of my family. Even before your impulses were altered, you stood side by side with my daughter against Angel. None of these are things I am going to forget, no matter how angry Buffy is at you. All I ask in exchange is that you please refrain from killing us.”

    “Presuming I regain the ability,” Spike muttered glumly.

    “Precisely.”

    “You and the niblet are safe as houses,” Spike promised. “Buffy... well.”

    “She can take care of herself, I suppose,” Joyce said. “But if you _did_ kill her, that would be harder for me to forgive.”

    “That’s not really what I want from Buffy,” Spike said quietly.

    “I know that,” Joyce said gently. “But I think you’d do best to let that go. As far as you can,” she added. “There are too many differences between you.”

    Spike was curious about something. “If there weren’t,” he asked, “if she wasn’t disgusted by the very thought... would you be okay with it?”

    Joyce frowned. “Buffy and a vampire,” she mused. “I don’t know. I think the natural differences are probably too innate. I didn’t entirely approve of Angel. Not as he was. He spent a lot of time sneaking behind my back, and he got Buffy into a lot of trouble. She was also very young. I couldn’t see anything healthy in their relationship. Even if he had been human, I think I would have disapproved.”

    “And me?”

    Joyce smiled. “Well, your behavior has been very different from Angel’s. The way you are honest with me is proof of that. You’re a vampire, and that does make things difficult. But if you were human,” she said, “you seem like you would have been a very nice young man.”

    Spike shrugged. “I guess I was, once,” he said.

    “The issue’s rather moot, at the moment,” Joyce said. She glanced at her watch again. “And I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she added. “I don’t want Buffy disturbed.”

    “I understand,” Spike said. “Thanks for the cuppa,” he said again.

    “I’d say any time, but I’m afraid...”

    “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “I’ll stay away.” He figured he’d try, at least. For now. He pressed Joyce’s warm hand in his cold one, with a slight gentlemanly bow. “I thank you for your hospitality, madam,” he said. “My respects to your family.”

    Joyce looked almost flattered. “Go on with you,” she said. “And take care of yourself.”

    “I’ll do my best, Joyce. I’m glad you’re better. Stay safe.”

    “And you.”  
  


***

    That was the last time he’d really spoken to her. He was glad it had ended well. He’d started thinking of her not only as Buffy’s mother, but a sort of universal Mum, there for everyone, even laying a patch on the motherless hole in his own heart. And now she was gone. Gone for good. Not that he would have wished eternal life on her anyway – it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be – but she had died far too young, really.

    Spike picked another sprig of heal-all and added it to the bouquet. Wistfully, he wished the flower’s name was more than common folklore. He wished it could heal this grief he was so unaccustomed to feeling.

 


End file.
